On February 2, network television's top-rated news program, 60 Minutes, aired an interview with Anita Hill. CBS spokesman Roy Brunett told MediaWatch that 60 Minutes
did no investigation of Hill beforehand, and it showed. The
story was 12 days early: in their Valentine, CBS noted that Hill
had received "more than 30,000 letters of support," and the
interview was just as tough. Instead of employing its normal
take-no-prisoners interview style, 60 Minutes treated her not
like a controversial political figure, but like a celebrity to be
adored. In fact, they were actually tougher on Barbra Streisand
earlier this season than they were on Hill.

60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley began by asking
Hill: "You've been described as someone who is conservative in
your positions. Is that a fair description of you?" In a
roundabout way, Hill agreed: "I think I am conservative to a
number of people because I do have a religious background. I do
go to church. I'm very close to my family. I have a strong
belief in the family structure. And I work in a very conservative
profession. As a law professor, generally, it's a conservative
profession, so I think in that sense it is fair to say that on some
issues or in some respects I am conservative."

Bradley pushed further: "How would you describe yourself
politically?" Hill admitted "I'm a Democrat." That's the only
revelation the interview produced. During the hearings, liberal
activists asked what Hill would have to gain from testifying
against Thomas, since she was a conservative. One of Hill's
witnesses stressed that Hill supported Robert Bork's nomination
to the Supreme Court. But when Hill publicly contradicted that
conservative image, Bradley failed to probe Hill about Bork, or
about Roe vs. Wade, the primary obsession of the first Thomas hearings.

Instead, Bradley queried: "I'm told you have a picture of
Eleanor Roosevelt on your office wall, with a quote from her
that says: `You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every
experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You
must do things you think you cannot.' Is that...you do have that?"

Bradley followed up with softball questions: "What were the
costs to you?....Do you think that's what in essence happened to
you, that you came forward, and they didn't believe you? That
in some ways you were made to be the culprit?....Do you think
you got a fair hearing?....You think it would have been
different if there would have been a woman on the committee?....Do you
think this becomes an issue in the upcoming election?....Are you
going to have any kind of role in that?" During these questions,
Bradley refrained from interrupting, letting Hill speak as long
as she wished. In conclusion, Bradley handed Hill a question
that sounded more like a Barbara Walters question to a movie
star: "When someone looks at you and sees Anita Hill, what do
you want that to mean?" What could 60 Minutes have asked Hill about?

The American Spectator Exposé. Investigative reporter David Brock filed an astonishing exposé on Anita Hill in the March issue of The American Spectator
that suggests Hill's story may have been built on false
testimony. Brock's best investigative scoop came from the Senate
Judiciary Committee's depositions of Susan Hoerchner, the
California judge who testified on behalf of Hill during the
televised hearings. According to Brock, "In her [Senate] staff
deposition and on another occasion, Hoerchner told interviewers
that the call in which Hill said she was being sexually harassed
occurred before September 1981, i.e., before Hill had gone to
work for Thomas." After consulting with her lawyer, Hoerchner
changed her story, telling Senators she could not remember the
precise date when Hill called.

Brock detailed many other revelations. A former Education
Department official told Brock that then-Education Secretary
Terrel Bell "received several allegations of sexual harassment
from Anita Hill during the time she worked at the department...
directed at Education officials other than Clarence Thomas."

And: "According to Hill's former co-workers at the EEOC, she
knew [Democratic Sen. Howard] Metzenbaum aide James Brudney
quite well. They say that Hill spoke often of going out with
Brudney, and of having spent weekends at his apartment when she
worked there....More than any other Hill staffer, Brudney...made it his
aim to defeat Clarence Thomas." These revelations may be less
ironclad than Hoerchner's lying to Congress, but they do cast
large doubts on Hill's credibility -- and the media's.

The Post-Newsweek Coverup.Newsweek dispatched Supreme Court reporter Bob Cohn to investigate Hill. But for all Cohn's effort, Newsweek
only printed a tiny one-sided December 2 "Periscope" item on
how "Republican leaders tried to dig up information that would
discredit Anita Hill and applied strong-arm tactics to witnesses
reluctant to come forward against her."

Cohn later summarized his investigation in The New Republic
(January 6 & 13 issue). In it, Cohn reported revelations
similar to some of Brock's findings: "I tracked down Lawrence
Shiles, who had signed a [Judiciary] committee affidavit
describing events that occurred while he was enrolled in Hill's
legal writing class in 1983. In the three-page affidavit and
subsequent interview, Shiles said -- get this -- that he and two male
friends found a dozen short black pubic hairs inside papers
returned by Hill." The Shiles affidavit was signed on the last
day of the Hill hearings, but no one reported it.

Cohn also found: "The former students seemed to share an
aversion to Hill. All complained she was an incompetent
professor whose liberal views infected her teaching. Several
said off the record that she represented, as one put it, 'the worst case
of affirmative action.'"

Like Brock, Cohn mentioned the testimony of a fundraiser for
the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), who told him
that NARAL head Kate Michelman told her: "This will not be a
difficult job. We have Anita Hill. She's agreed to come forward.
We've been working with her since July." Since Hill assured
Senators that she had not been in contact with liberal interest
groups, it would show Hill to be a perjurer. But Newsweek refused to print any of this, forcing Cohn to turn to The New Republic.

Similarly, Lally Weymouth, a frequent contributor to The Washington Post "Outlook" section, submitted her investigation of Hill to the Post, but they rejected it. Instead, the daughter of Post and Newsweek owner Katharine Graham offered it to The Wall Street Journal, which printed the story last November 20.

Weymouth revealed that Hill served as an adviser to a
feminist group at the University of Oklahoma, the Organization
for the Advancement of Women. Susan Stallings, a former member
of that group, told Weymouth: "Anita Hill is a liberal...she was
for such things as `comparable worth.' At our meetings, if it wasn't
Reagan-bashing, it was Bush-bashing. They were terrified of Roe v. Wade being overturned."

Ironically, Brock told MediaWatch that Cohn and
Weymouth appeared to be the only other national reporters on
Hill's trail, and their stories were both rejected by their employer.
Brock saw no sign of the other national media outlets, which spent
months trailing Thomas tidbits, but apparently wouldn't think
of investigating the "Rosa Parks of sexual harassment." Perhaps
avoiding the appearance of insensitivity is now more important
than the pursuit of truth.

For all of the media's pious declarations of moral
indignation over Oliver North lying to Congress, their failure
to investigate Anita Hill's credibility reveals a blind eye to
corruption of the political process by liberals.

NewsBites: Unfair to Anita

UNFAIR TO ANITA. In a Columbia Journalism Review (CJR)
poll of 100 journalists, 74 percent thought that the "press's
handling of the leak that broke the Anita Hill story was fair
and reliable," but just 31 percent thought that coverage of the
William Kennedy Smith rape allegations "has been fair and
without bias." Clearly the poll in the January/February issue
proved reporters don't view things the same way as the public.
Overall, the CJR poll found that 77 percent of reporters
think news outlets "deal fairly with all sides." Compare that to
a 1989 Times Mirror survey. It found that 68 percent of the
public believes the media "tend to favor one side."

SCARY CLARENCE. Now that Clarence Thomas has written
four opinions for the Supreme Court, legal reporters are warning
of his conservatism, and worse. On January 18, Los Angeles Times
reporter David Savage suggested Thomas "may be showing the
first signs of being a conservative hard-liner ready to sharply
restrict the protections of the Constitution."

In USA Today ten days later, reporter Tony Mauro
issued a one- sided salvo on Thomas' decision in an Alabama case
in which the court ruled against a black county commissioner.
Mauro quoted a lawyer for the NAACP, the plaintiff's lawyer, and
liberal black judge A. Leon Higginbotham, who lectured Thomas
for not appreciating what the civil rights movement accomplished
for him. Mauro questioned his blackness further: "But during his
confirmation hearings, Thomas sought to convince the Senate he would
not forget his roots. As soon as he was sworn in, though, doubts
re-emerged: Thomas hired four white males as law clerks."

Legal expert Terry Eastland told MediaWatch these
reporters expect Thomas to rule in favor of blacks regardless of
the wording of the laws, concluding: "By this standard, Antonin
Scalia would always have to rule favorably for Italian plaintiffs, and
Sandra Day O'Connor would always have to rule in favor of
women."

SO CONSERVATIVE THEY SING. In 1978 Stephen Hess surveyed White
House reporters and found 42 percent considered themselves
liberal, 39 percent said they were middle-of-the-road and only
19 percent said they were conservative. Thirteen years later,
the Brookings Institute Senior Fellow did another survey of the
White House press corps. This time 42.4 percent said they were
liberal, 24.2 percent said middle-of-the road and 33.3 percent
called themselves conservative.

Hess concluded: "Thus the White House press corps might best be characterized as liberal and
considerably more conservative than it used to be." But what is
conservative by Washington media standards? Hess cited ABC White House
Correspondent Brit Hume's observation that he has seen fellow
reporters sing the national anthem. "That is new," Hume
remarked.

TASTE OF MILWAUKEE. WISN radio talk show host Mark Belling has provided MediaWatch
with telling proof of how Bill Moyers operates: If the evidence
contradicts his liberal thesis, then he simply ignores it. Last fall,
two producers from Moyers' production company filmed an hour of
Belling's afternoon show during which callers discussed their
attitudes toward their work and jobs. The producers assured
Belling they "had no idea of the tone of their piece since they
hadn't begun to dig into it yet."

It turned out the producers were working on Minimum Wages, a January 8 PBS special analyzed in last month's MediaWatch.
Belling remembered his show: "Caller after caller eloquently
and poignantly talked of their experiences. Virtually all were
positive. Many were former factory workers who lost jobs in the
'80s but recovered and are now doing much better than they were
before." Naturally, he continued, "my show ended up on the
editing room floor." Instead, Moyers painted a portrait of
Milwaukee's middle class as decimated during the 1980s as
workers were unable to replace high-paying factory jobs with anything
but minimum wage positions.

PC PANDERING. The standard leftist line is that Political Correctness (PC) doesn't really exist. That's also the theme of Washington Post
reporter Michael Abramowitz's January 3 one-sided press release
on the annual convention of the very PC Modern Language
Association (MLA).

Abramowitz repeated the MLA's assertions: "One group of
prominent scholars...held an organizational meeting here to
begin correcting what its leaders term misinformation propagated
by right-wing scholars, think-tanks and commentators." And: "A
common complaint heard at the convention was that the media have
endlessly recycled what one scholar termed 'shamelessly over-simplified
scare stories' to paint a dire, inaccurate picture of a
radicalized academe."

Abramowitz didn't ask what kind of scholarship MLA considers
worthy. The 1989 convention produced papers titled "Literary and
Critical Theory from Lesbian Perspectives" and "The Muse of
Masturbation." One wonders what this year produced.

HEALTH HYPE. If health care is the issue, then more government is NBC's answer. As part of Today's
week-long "State of America" series, Robert Hager reported on
January 23: "This is a nation aware it has a problem providing
health care but not quite sure how to do it. But it has to do
something. Dr. Sidney Wolfe of Public Citizen Health Research
Group warns of disaster." As a loyal employee of Ralph Nader,
Dr. Wolfe predicted: "Our health care system is going to be
bankrupt by 1997, when the Commerce Department estimates we'll
be spending a trillion, almost a trillion and a half dollars."

Hager continued: "Many have suggested we look to Canada,
which has a national system of care. No Blue Cross, no private
insurance. There is one insurer, the Canadian government. Canada
spends forty percent less per person for health care than we
do. The lines are not long and Canadians visit their doctors
more than we do."

But in a January 26 Washington Times article titled "Canadian
System Near Financial Abyss," reporter Joyce Price found, "As
many members of Congress are pointing to Canada's health plan as
a model for the United States, Toronto health management
consultant Fred Holmes says the system is on the verge of
financial collapse." Holmes told Price: "Medicare in Canada is
poised to disintegrate due to the enormous costs...Even if it
were fiscally sound...he doubts most Americans would be willing to
accept the average six-month waits for coronary bypass surgery or
hernia repair."

BETTER IN EL SALVADOR? On Today January 22,
co-host Bryant Gumbel and reporter George Lewis teamed up to
discredit the conservative economic policies of the 1980s. "In
the Reagan years economic erosion set in, so much so that the
middle class now finds itself in ever deepening trouble," Gumbel
began. Lewis then aired sound-bites of Democratic candidates Bill
Clinton, Robert Kerrey and Tom Harkin, liberal economist Philip
Mattera and "conservative columnist" Kevin Phillips. President
Bush got one sentence.

Lewis talked with a woman who immigrated from El Salvador,
but "when the defense plant where Elena had been working laid
her off, she had to take a lower paying job," a problem Lewis
called "typical." Lewis noted that she now wants to return to El
Salvador, prompting him to conclude with this gem: "A definite
measure of middle class discontent -- when people in America
begin talking about El Salvador as the land of opportunity."

MARILYN VS. HILLARY.Time has extended its liberal
double standard to political wives. In the January 20 issue,
Associate Editor Priscilla Painton reported that as First Lady,
Marilyn Quayle "would make Americans long for Nancy Reagan --
taffetas, tyrannies and all." Painton included only one quote
from a mostly positive Washington Post series on the Vice
President and his wife. The quote came from an unnamed "Quayle
associate," who said, "Nancy would be considered a woman of the
people" compared to Mrs. Quayle. Ignoring her work for breast
cancer research and disaster relief, Painton called Quayle a
"controlling" woman, a "grudge-bearing campaigner" and a
"watchdog of a wife with an ambition as long as her enemies
list."

But the next week, Time wrote a love letter to Hilary
Clinton, whom writer Margaret Carlson painted as an "amalgam of
Betty Crocker, Mother Teresa and Oliver Wendell Holmes," a woman
who "discusses educational reform....then hops into her fuel-
efficient car with her perfectly behaved daughter for a day of
good works." Clinton won praise for wanting a "big city law
practice," chairing the left-wing Children's Defense Fund and
her past work on the McGovern campaign. Carlson made excuses for
Hillary Clinton's often barbed remarks: "Running an official
mansion that attracts 20,000 visitors a year can be wearing....
she occasionally tires of the fishbowl."

CENSORSHIP OKAY? As long as it's done by the Iraqi
government, according to CNN's Bernard Shaw. In a look back at
Desert Storm on January 16, Shaw sniped, "some say Desert Storm
coverage was distorted by a government intent on keeping the
real story away from the public." But he was talking about the
U.S. government, not the Iraqi dictatorship. He made no mention
of the blatant censorship and misinformation peddled by the
Iraqi government or how often these untruths ended up on CNN.

Instead, he asked Newsday's Patrick Sloyan, "Who was
behind this intense campaign by the government to keep the media
in check?" Sloyan charged it was "a Bush decision implemented
by Cheney." Shaw asked Sloyan, "Did the media sufficiently tell
people they weren't getting the whole story?" and questioned at
the public's intelligence, asking, "Does the public adequately
know the role of news media in a democracy?" As the discussion
came to an end, Shaw claimed "the people's right to know suffers
when government imposes that kind of censorship" and then
huffed, "I wonder if people really care?"

CASTRO THE MAESTRO. Two years after the fall of the
Berlin Wall some reporters are still insisting "the people" want
communism. On the January 21 MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour,
Canadian Broadcasting's David Halton reported: "In the '80s,
Cubans had gotten used to one of the best living standards in
the Third World. Now suddenly they seemed to be plunged back into the
kind of poverty they thought they left behind."

But this "plunge" under Castro did not occur suddenly.
According to the Latin American Statistical Abstract, decline in
living standards has been consistent during Castro's rule. For
example, infant mortality in Cuba in 1969 had risen to 46 per
thousand from a pre-Castro figure of 32 per thousand.

Although Halton interviewed both dissidents and Castro
supporters, he seemed to have his mind made up: "But what is
remarkable with the Quimares family like many other Cubans we
talked to, is that even in the face of their hardships, they're
still supporting Fidel Castro. Castro, they say, is close to his
people, unlike the old guard of communist leaders who were kicked out
in Eastern Europe. Castro's socialism, they claim, won't
collapse because it is rooted in national pride and social
justice." Jose Cardenas of the Cuban American National
Foundation responded: "One has to only look at Costa Rica to
determine that dictatorship is not 'necessary' to improve the
social conditions of a country."

NPR BEWITCHED. Guess what you're missing if you don't
listen to taxpayer-funded National Public Radio? Margot Adler,
self- proclaimed witch, NPR reporter and author of Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshipers and Other Pagans in America Today. In a profile of Adler, New York Times
reporter Georgia Dullea wrote, "of the many neo-pagan groups,
Ms. Adler said she feels most sympathetic to the newest: the
goddess spirituality movement, which reveres matriarchy."

Adler also said: "What matters is that goddess spirituality
is meeting the needs of women and some men. People are using the
goddess as a metaphor for feelings of creativity, strength and
empowerment." But apparently she's not empowered enough to feel
comfortable going public. U.S. News & World Report writer John Leo noted in the January 27 issue that Adler refuses to be photographed with a broom.

Revolving Door:
ABC's Bush Campaign

ABC's Bush Campaign. Before leaving the Department of Housing and Urban Development in mid-1990, Sherrie Rollins
held the title of Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs under
Jack Kemp. Now, after a year and a half as Director of News
Information for ABC News, she's re-joined the Bush
Administration as Assistant to the President for Public Liaison and
Intergovernmental Affairs. In her new post, Rollins will be working
with another ABC veteran, Dorrance Smith, the long-time This Week with David Brinkley Executive Producer who toils in the White House communications office.

Newsday News. Long Island's Times Mirror-owned Newsday and its companion New York Newsday have named Elaine Kamarck,
an occasional contributor for four years, "special
correspondent." Kamarck's a veteran Democratic operative. In 1988
she was Deputy Campaign Manager for Bruce Babbitt. In 1984 she handled
delegate selection for Walter Mondale and in 1980 she directed
special projects for Jimmy Carter. A Newsday press
release says Kamarck "will spend the next year reporting and
commenting on the presidential campaign." Kamarck remains a
Senior Fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute which also
employs former U.S. News & World Report Associate Editor Robert Shapiro, now an economic policy adviser to Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton.

Right Moves. Fox News Service has named Cissy Baker
its Vice President and Managing Editor. In 1982 Baker made an
unsuccessful run for Congress as a Republican. Baker spent most
of the 1980s as a CNN Washington reporter and then Managing
Editor at the network's Atlanta headquarters....Andy Plattner, an Associate Editor of U.S. News & World Report
from 1985 to 1990 and Director of Communications for the Office
of Educational Research at the Department of Education ever
since, has jumped back to the private sector. He now handles press for
the National Center on Education and the Economy wich evaluates
student skills and the Public Education Fund Network, a group
dedicated to getting business support for schools.

Moving to Moscow. After a decade of reporting for ABC News, former Democratic Senate aide Rick Inderfurth
is leaving the network. A Moscow correspondent from early 1989
through mid-1991, Inderfurth has decided to move back to Moscow
to "get involved in rebuilding the former Soviet Union."
Inderfurth told The Washington Post he's looking at several options and "there's nothing firm yet."

During the first two years of the Carter Administration
Inderfurth served as Special Assistant to the National Security
Council Director, becoming Deputy Staff Director for political
and security affairs for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1979.
When the Republicans took control of the Senate in 1981, ABC
News hired him to cover the Pentagon. As national security
affairs reporter from 1984-89, Inderfurth became a familiar face
on World News Tonight and Nightline.

PBS Omnipresence Scowls at Charges of Bias

BILL "I HAVE NO AGENDA" MOYERS

Poor Bill Moyers. He spends his life serving as the moral
umpire of the national conscience, dishing out criticism of our
leaders' failures. But he can't take it. Witness Moyers'
appearance at the annual PBS press tour on January 6 in California. In
one press conference, Moyers protested "I have no agenda,"
"I tell you that I have no agenda," " I don't think I have an
agenda," " I can't say that I have a political agenda," and
finally, "I have no agenda."

After publicly declaring his supposed nonpartisanship, Moyers
resentfully scowled at suggestions of liberal bias: "Anybody
who looks at the bulk of my work over the last 20 years knows
that it's a fallacious attack to find in it a left-wing
agenda... they've been able to offer no substantive analysis of my work
that would confirm their desire to label me, as I think he
[conservative David Horowitz] said yesterday, 'a left-wing
Democrat.'"

This comes from the man who spoke affectionately to a
gathering of Democrats last March: "Down there in Texas, I was
raised on mother's milk and Roosevelt speeches, and over the
years, I still cherish the party's defining stands." Moyers even
claimed: "Many of you have seen programs I've done which have
been quite critical of Democrats." Yes, from the left. Take this
criticism from last year's speech: "By the 1980s, when the
Democrats in Congress colluded with Ronald Reagan and the Republicans to
revise the tax code on behalf of the rich, it appeared the
party had lost its soul."

Moyers offered reporters a new definition of liberalism:
"Liberalism is not another program. What liberalism is, is a
belief that a democracy like ours has to be tolerant. Has to
open itself to ideas, that the answer to a bad idea is a better idea.
Civility. I mean, I'd like to think that's what liberalism is. I
define myself in that sense as a liberal." But the
oh-so-tolerant Moyers also groused: "I find it very hard to have
intelligent conversations with people on the right wing because
they want to hit first and ask questions later. And I just
simply don't let that criticism set my agenda." Earlier, Moyers
had declared: "I have very strong opinions. Strong opinions mean
strong enemies, and I have strong enemies, people who dislike
my opinions, who don't believe they should be on public
broadcasting." This from the man with no agenda.

Moyers topped all this off by announcing he would base two or three new programs this spring on the nine-part Philadelphia Inquirer
series on how the middle class lost ground in the 1980s. The
series won our December Janet Cooke Award for its liberal
manipulation of statistics. Said Moyers: "I urge you all to read
the 11-part [sic] Philadelphia Inquirer series."

Charlotte Observer Runs Cooke Award

COMMENDABLE BALANCE

The Charlotte Observer has gone where no news outlet has gone before: it's published a MediaWatch Janet Cooke Award that dissected a story the paper had carried. The December award went to The Philadelphia Inquirer
for a nine-part series that supposedly proved the poor and
middle class were big losers in the 1980s. Instead, as MediaWatch documented, the series was built on a sea of specious statistics. The Observer
ran a condensed version of the series, prompting Thomas Ashcraft, U.S.
Attorney for the Western Distict of North Carolina, to send the
Cooke Award article to Observer Editor Rich Oppel.

In a letter to Ashcraft, Oppel wrote that "the series was
heavily debated in the newsroom before it was published. At
least one editor argued against publishing it. I decided it
should run." Still, Oppel opted to run the Cooke Award critique
in the Sunday "Viewpoints" section on January 19. Oppel's
willingness to provide a forum for pointed criticism deserves
congratulations. Hopefully, in the future some of Oppel's colleagues
will show the same openness toward balancing one-sided news
stories.

There They Go Again

INQUIRER INK

The Philadelphia Inquirer hasn't learned anything. Far
from being embarrassed by its shameless manipulation of
emotions through misleading generalities in last fall's
"America: What Went Wrong" series, the Inquirer did it
again. On February 2 the same two reporters, Donald Barlett and James
Steele, wrote a front page story on the unfairness of a capital
gains tax cut.

Again, the duo made no attempt at balance. They charged that a
cut "would continue the legislative practices of the last two
decades that have tilted the economic rules in favor of the few
at the expense of the many" and would "encourage another round
of corporate takeovers, such as the ones in the 1980s that led
to the closing of plants and the elimination of jobs."

Building on the class envy theme, the reporters argued that
"if you were one of the 2.6 million individuals and families
living in New Jersey who earned less than $50,000 a year, it
would have taken every dollar that all of you paid in federal
taxes to offset the tax cut planned for people with incomes of
more than $1 million." Really? In a 1990 study cited by the late
Warren Brookes, economist Allen Sinai, no friend of Reaganomics,
predicted a rate drop from 28 to 15 percent would create "a
substantial tax revenue increase of $30 billion to $40 billion over five
years."

The duo also claimed that "an Inquirer analysis of the 70-year
history of the capital gains preference shows no evidence
linking the tax to the creation of jobs." Well, Sinai pointed
out that "from 1982 to 1986 following the reduction of the
capital gains rate to 20 percent in 1981...new business formations rose
5.7 percent." After the '86 hike to 28 percent, they fell by 3
percent.

Nina Destroys
Evidence

HILL SPILLS

With no help from the media, the Anita Hill myth continues to fall apart. In the March Essence magazine, Hill denied that she was ever a conservative.

She explained: "There is this sense that I was an absolute
staunch conservative, that I was opposed to affirmative action,
that I supported Robert Bork. A lot of that has been
misunderstood. First of all, I have never been against affirmative
action, and while I was extremely uncomfortable with the way the
hearings were conducted, I did not support Robert Bork on the
issues. My position is that the man should not be judged on his
personality. We decided we didn't like him as a person, that he
was strident, arrogant, and therefore he was not a good person
for the Supreme Court position. My position was that he should
stand or fall on the issues." Hill also told Essence that at the EEOC, she "was often antagonistic to the position of the Reagan Administration."

Meanwhile, NPR reporter Nina Totenberg offered this lecture on the February 25 CBS This Morning: "Our job is to make sure the information is accurate, legitimate, a story." Just what she failed to do.

Asked about new stories on Hill such as The American Spectator exposé detailed last month in MediaWatch, Totenberg told TV, etc.:
"I had heard a good deal of that and did not consider it
proven.... My standards for what is good enough to put on the
air are high, and I have not found anything to date sufficient
to put on." And when Totenberg told investigators that she
destroyed documents to protect her sources, a practice that
ignited the media during Iran-Contra, The Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times did not consider it newsworthy.

Hill Shills

HILL SHILLS. The Washington Post Company empire took a much
harsher look at Gennifer Flowers' claims against Democrat Bill
Clinton than they did Anita Hill's. Take Post television
critic Tom Shales on Gennifer Flowers' press conference January
28: "You'd almost think Harold Robbins and Sidney Sheldon has
collaborated to produce dialogue like that."

But last October 12, it was a different Shales: "What about
the fact that Hill maintained such dignity and stamina in such
sordid and sleazy surroundings? It had to occur to some viewers
as they watched the way she handled herself that she would have
made a much better Supreme Court nominee than Thomas does."

Post Company-owned Newsweek noted seven inconsistencies in
Flowers' story in its February 3 issue. But Hill's story was
beyond reproach. Last October, reporter Eleanor Clift wrote that
Sen. Alan Simpson's suggestion that "stuff" would come out on
Hill was "the lowest of many low points in the Clarence Thomas
hearings." Clift declared Hill had "done nothing to suggest she
has a credibility problem."

Janet Cooke Award: CBS: Sunday Mourning Michigan

In the past few months, network news watchers have seen
increasingly manipulative stories on welfare spending cuts.
Often, reporters stress an emotional portrait of the abandoned
poor and skip over the real statistics. Last month, MediaWatch
noted how CBS reporter Bob Faw dishonestly presented a Connecticut
welfare mother with four kids as the victims of approaching cuts.
But the Connecticut legislature considered nothing to reduce
benefits to families.

On January 12, CBS became a repeat offender. Sunday Morning
aired a heart-tugging profile of welfare cuts in Michigan. The
story ignored many details that would have contradicted its
portrait of conservatives kicking helpless poor people. For that
report, CBS earned the Janet Cooke Award.

Charles Kuralt began with an indictment of Michigan's lack of
compassion: "You know the old saying about giving a hungry man a
handout -- he'll just be hungry again after he's eaten. But if
you teach him to fish, the saying goes, why, then he'll always
be able to feed himself. A lot of states are thinking along these
lines, trying to reduce their budgets by cutting dependence on
welfare, telling a lot of people, in effect, to go fishing.
Trouble is, as David Culhane reports in our cover story, in
Michigan as elsewhere, the fishing isn't very good right now."

Culhane began: "They are praying for people here in Flint,
Michigan, whose general assistance welfare benefits have been
cut off. They are praying for people looking for jobs in the
face of an unemployment rate of almost 20 percent in the city,
almost 10 percent in the state, a state reeling from layoffs in the
automobile industry...Even so, beginning in October, Michigan
stopped welfare payments to 80,000 single adults across the
state. And critics say the overall social services budget has
been cut by 20 percent."

Wrong. Chuck Peller, a research analyst in Michigan's Department of Social Services, told MediaWatch:
"In real dollars, the budget increased. It's the biggest budget
ever." The total budget, including state and federal dollars,
added up to $5.8 billion, up from $5.1 million in fiscal 1990.
State spending slowed, but an increase in federal aid has meant
the budget has continued to grow.

When asked by MediaWatch about his figures, the
producer of the segment, Jim Houtrides, couldn't say exactly
where they came from: "We got this from several people,
including some people on the welfare services or whatever that thing is
called, committee in Lansing. And we said 'critics say' because
you can look at those figures and add them up any which way."

Later, Culhane moralized: "Many of the people who are taken
off general assistance in Michigan are in fact not able to work
because of medical or psychological reasons. Critics ask: Is it
morally wrong to withdraw their aid? And is it morally wrong to
withdraw aid from people eager to work when there are no jobs, people
like George Mongene. He's been sleeping outside in Flint for
twelve nights."

Misleading. Culhane failed to tell viewers that
Republican Governor John Engler set up a $3 million contract
with the state's Salvation Army, which guaranteed that no state
resident should sleep on the streets. The Salvation Army answers
an 800 number, and if no shelter is available, they put the
homeless in motels.

Nowhere in the report did Kuralt or Culhane cite anything
that would make Governor Engler's case. Take the elimination of
the general assistance program for single adults. CBS failed to
note that the average general assistance benefit ($145 a month)
was well below the average welfare program. CBS left out the
damning fact that in the months preceding the cuts, an unprecedented
25,000 people voluntarily left the general assistance rolls. CBS
also skipped the fact that 6,700 general assistance recipients
with medical or psychological problems have been added to the
disability fund.

When asked about these statistics, Houtrides told MediaWatch
he hadn't known any of them. Then, he denied it was his job to
provide the other side: "The Governor could have made his own
case if he thought it was significant that 25,000 had dropped
off the rolls."

CBS not only aired just five soundbites of their 25-minute
interview with Engler, they insured that Engler's point of view
would be outnumbered by more than three to one. Seventeen
soundbites expressed gloom or outrage over Engler's proposals. For
example, Culhane reported: "State Representative David Hollister
says the Engler administration...should also be giving unemployed
adults aid and job training so that they're better able to find
work."

Misleading. Engler isn't against giving training to
adults. Culhane did not report that Governor Engler proposed
(but the legislature rejected) a basic education initiative to
pay a $100 a month stipend for those seeking training. When
asked about this, Houtrides again responded: "I don't know the
specifics of that."

Culhane aired a clip of social worker Peppy Rosenthal: "I'm a
survivor of the Holocaust, and you know, in my wildest dream, I
never dreamt I would come to this country and have to protect
children from going hungry and homeless."

Misleading. This is not about children (or the
Holocaust). Families with children were excluded from cuts, as
was the state's Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) program. In
1990, before Engler won the gubernatorial race, Democratic Gov. Jim
Blanchard signed a 9.2 percent cut in all state cabinet departments,
including a 17 percent reduction in the ADC program. Under
Engler, funding has been slowly restored, eight percent in July
1991, another seven percent in November. On January 1, the
majority of ADC cases got another grant increase under a new
system. The typical grant to a family of three: $459 a month.
But Houtrides didn't know anything about these funding hikes,
either: "I don't know if that's, in fact, true, perhaps it's
true, perhaps not. I don't think it's true."

Houtrides also objected to the charge that outnumbering
Engler 17 to 5 was unfair: "It is probably a mistake to add up
poor people and Holliste and Peppy Rosenthal as one side and
Engler as the other side. I think the Governor of the state of
Michigan carries with him great weight because he's the Governor."

He also admitted that CBS edited out Engler comparing his
record on welfare to Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton: "He kept
comparing Michigan's positive welfare programs, constantly with,
and only with, Arkansas." But while CBS made Michigan look like
the nation's number one welfare welsher, the state currently
ranks eighth in welfare spending per capita.

In all of its reporting from Michigan, CBS (like other media
outlets) avoids asking questions from the taxpayer's point of
view. Reporters ask: Is it morally wrong to withdraw welfare?
They don't ask: Is it morally wrong to take money from those who
have earned it? Reporters focus on the burdens of the nonworking
poor, but not the tax burdens of the working poor and middle class.
The tax burden in Michigan has been rising steadily, driving
business out of the state, but the government is seen as the
protector of the unemployed, not the destroyer of jobs. But CBS
not only wallowed in liberal assumptions: it utterly failed to
check the most basic information that might have challenged the
liberal case.

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